Tuesday, November 20, 2012

A New President's Old Foreign Crisis Agenda

When
the recently elected president descends to the West Wing basement and takes his
place at the head of the table in the Situation Room, the agenda will look
depressingly like the one that was there before the election. If there were no
crisis there would be no crisis management and, thus, no meeting of the
National Security Council. Crisis drives the top command, which has little time
for more leisurely consideration of longer-term strategic thinking and
planning. This is the dilemma of a US that feels automatically involved and
still looked to for leadership in an increasingly leaderless world. Here are a
few samples of probable agenda items, along with some modest policy suggestions
that have little chance of being taken seriously.

ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN
WARFARE

The
US will apply what pressure it still possesses for a cease-fire.But Israel, wounded by Iran-supplied Hamas rocket
fire on its territory after taking out Hamas’ military leader, is poised to deliver
a punitive retaliatory blow on the tiny enclave aimed at both punishment and
deterrence. The dilemma is that the more comprehensive Israel’s military
response, the more alienated the Arab world and its new and fragile regimes will
become.

This
bloody drama has been playing itself out for well over half a century. The essence
of conflict is unchanged since the 1947 UN partition of the British Palestinian
mandate. Generations of American mediators have broken their picks on the stone
face of resentment in an Arab world of what it regards as a further extension
of Western colonialism into "their" region. The Israelis for their
part assert their historic rights while seeing all external threats through the
lens of the Holocaust. It is hard to be optimistic. But the time has long since
come for the US to lay on the table a draft map of a final territorial
agreement between the sides, and stop hoping that somehow the parties will do
this themselves. That action can at least form the basis for a more realistic
discussion of concrete terms, which may never happen otherwise.

SYRIA

The US has struggled for months to find a role that
doesn’t involve American boots on the ground or aircraft enforcing a no-fly
zone. Unlike Libya, Syria is a linchpin of the Arab
Middle East and a still-powerful
state. No good options have appeared so far, particularly for a US that is weary
of ambiguous incursions into the Middle East.

More effective help is needed to
finally topple the genocidal Assad regime. A new opportunity may have opened by
the newly-formed “National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition
Forces.” One lesson learned in the bungled planning for invading Iraq in 2003
was that President George W. Bush’s close-to-unilateral action would have fared
much better with a broad multilateral backing such as that organized by Bush’s
father in 1991 in Kuwait. Given the refusal of Russia and China to vote for a
UN-sanctioned intervention, it is time to form a new Coalition of the Willing,
based on NATO, to tackle the thankless but vital task of securing a cease-fire
and the beginnings of a post-Assad Syria.

IRAN

The suspected development of a
nuclear weapons capability is what put Iran on the regular list. Israel’s
redline warnings to Tehran portend a new Middle East war, this time uniting
Shiite Iran with Sunni Arabia in solidarity against Israel and the US. The
clock is ticking, and the prospects are dire if no diplomatic solution can be
found.

US policy correctly considers
preventing further nuclear weapons proliferation a high priority. But the costs
of using force preemptively may outweigh the dangers of letting diplomacy run
its uncertain course. One possibly promising approach may lie in a statement by
Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak stating that Iran has delayed its ambition for
nuclear weaponry and is converting some of its enriched uranium fuel rods to
civilian use. The president’s diplomatic track should spell out more clearly
the mutual benefits inherent in such an approach.

SOUTH
CHINA SEAS

It is no accident that the crisis
list begins with the Middle East in various forms. But the sharpening dispute
over potentially oil-rich islands has already led to dangerous confrontations
between China and Japan, threatening armed escalation. This conflict plays into
other tensions arising in
Chinese: Japanese relations, colored by memories of the cruel Japanese
occupation of China in the 1930’s.

All one can say is that
this is so 19th century. There are few signs of a peaceful solution. But I
wonder if anyone in Washington even remembers something called the International
Court of Justice. It seems unlikely, since it is never mentioned even though
the United States helped establish the court in order to provide an impartial
forum for resolving just such territorial and boundary disputes. The court did
this some years ago in a conflict involving Atlantic fisheries, and sits there expensively
ready to conduct an impartial analysis of conflicting claim and historic boundaries,
hopefully rendering a judicious and impartial verdict that in a sane world
would be accepted by the parties. For a country that preaches the rule of law,
such a unique US initiative might astonish the rest of the world and give the
US a renewed reputation for constructive leadership.